ICSST CH39: Interlocking Traps

In the final second before the door closed, the players could still see Zhou Qi’an’s confused expression, as if he didn’t understand why they weren’t coming up.

It wasn’t until the elevator began descending that one of the players outside finally spoke with difficulty, “Was that just now a person… or a ghost?”

The player beside him swallowed hard. “Does it make a difference?”

No, it didn’t!!

At this moment, Mu Tianbai was surrounded by a carriage full of corpses.

He and his shadow maintained a profound silence at the same time. Loving the sight of blood splattering and being surrounded by corpses were two completely different things—especially since both of them had mild cleanliness obsessions.

The stench of the monster corpses was particularly strong. Mu Tianbai closed his eyes for a moment, trying his best not to look at the scattered remains.

Zhou Qi’an’s face was pale as he bent down, his long fingers covering his mouth and nose. “Ugh…”

Mu Tianbai, whose hearing was exceptionally sharp: “……”

Let’s just destroy everything.

The elevator stopped at a blood-red number—‘4’.

At night, the number of open shops on the fourth floor was noticeably higher than on the third. Zhou Qi’an, already familiar with the process, carried his sacred artifact and ran ahead to map out the area. He had just sprinted a short distance when something suddenly latched onto his thigh.

He reacted instantly, reversing his harpoon in a swift motion, ready to strike.

“Brother Zhou, it’s me!”

Right in front of him was a mirror, reflecting the college student wearing a white dress. His originally sparse eyebrows had arched into a crescent shape, and his hair had grown significantly longer in a short amount of time.

Thanks to the golden legend, the college student recognized Zhou Qi’an—Zhou Qi’an, however, almost didn’t recognize him.

Beside him stood a female player, raising both hands. “Don’t hurt us by mistake!”

These two unlucky souls had no idea what they had triggered. One of them was starting to look more and more like the long-haired girl from the train in both appearance and clothing, while the other had disheveled hair, as if they had just been through a fierce battle.

The college student looked at Zhou Qi’an as if seeing a savior and hurriedly explained, “When I was picking a shop, that black-haired female ghost mouthed to me to choose the dance studio.”

“…I thought it was because I spoke up for her on the train, and she wanted to help me.”

Turns out, the scariest thing was being self-deluded.

Not far away, the window of the dance studio was wide open. The long-haired girl stood by the practice barre, the white hem of her dress fluttering in the night breeze. She stared silently in their direction, her lips curving into a chilling smile.

Zhou Qi’an’s expression changed. “Let’s get out of here first.”

The petite female player was overwhelmed with gratitude, nearly tearing up. “We didn’t dare go to other floors, afraid players would mistake us for monsters and kill us. Thank goodness you weren’t scared of us.”

She hadn’t gone to the dance studio. Instead, she had been working at a bubble tea shop. Though she had won her battle against a monster, some of the pearls had parasitized her skin, making her look somewhere between human and ghost.

Her words were suddenly cut off.

Right in front of them, the open elevator car was piled high with corpse fragments. Zhou Qi’an calmly stepped inside and then waited for them.

Suddenly thinking of something, he turned to the college student. “Are there any carts on this floor?”

Otherwise, transporting everything to the third floor later would be inconvenient.

The female player volunteered, “I’ll go look.”

One minute, two minutes, three minutes… The elevator door-close button had been pressed countless times, but there was still no sign of her.

Zhou Qi’an frowned. “Why isn’t she back yet?”

Leaning against a wall of corpses, the college student was on the verge of tears. “Is it possible… that she got scared and ran away? Brother Zhou, what do you need all these corpses for?”

Zhou Qi’an: “To collect the bodies.”

The college student was instantly awed. “Brother, you’re a good person.”

Mu Tianbai raised an eyebrow slightly. Where did this fool come from, actually believing that?

“He’s using them as raw materials—to grind the bones into rice flour.”

The college student froze.

Zhou Qi’an also froze.

Mu Tianbai: “?”

What are you freezing for?

In the end, it was the college student who went to find a cart. The elevator made a round trip, finally returning to the third floor.

Zhou Qi’an stacked the corpses neatly onto the cart and shook his head at Mu Tianbai. “Your thinking is too extreme. Corpses should be respected.”

They reached the third floor.

Pushing his heavy corpse-laden cart, Zhou Qi’an headed straight for the Jin Taotao’s Bone Rice Shop.

“……” With his mouth?

Inside the rice shop, chaos reigned.

The floor, once relatively clean, was now covered with broken jars. Shattered glass fragments mixed with rice grains, making it nearly impossible to pick out the rice without injury, no matter how carefully one tried.

Though he had anticipated something like this, Zhou Qi’an’s gaze still darkened slightly.

Among the glass shards, he also noticed traces of an abnormal color.

“Cheap ghostly tricks.” The rice on the ground was definitely contaminated with something bad.

As he had predicted, the cabinets in the back still contained plenty of intact rice jars.

By now, the third floor had returned to complete silence—at least within visible range, there were no immediate dangers.

Zhou Qi’an calmly pushed his cart forward. His fingertips moved slightly from time to time, as if playing some rhythm on the edge of the corpse cart. Without looking back at Mu Tianbai or the college student, he made his way straight toward his destination.

On the way, they passed the corpse of the MP3-listening player. His internal organs had been almost entirely scooped out, his skin peeled away, leaving only a blood-drenched skeleton behind.

Zhou Qi’an could only barely recognize the corpse’s identity through the fabric of its clothes.

Han Li had said that when players died, they would drop between one to three items. Seeing none around, it was clear someone had already taken them.

Zhou Qi’an bent down and quickly added another corpse to the cart.

---

Inside the Bone Rice Shop, the atmosphere was a stark contrast of ice and fire. Scratching sounds came from within the furnace—who knew what was burning inside? But it gave the unsettling feeling that at any moment, a corpse might jump out.

The figure in the sterilization suit hadn’t expected Zhou Qi’an to voluntarily return. However, upon seeing the cart full of corpses, the hand that had been about to raise the iron hook slowly lowered.

He had to finish his work first.

Zhou Qi’an silently unloaded the monster corpses and placed them onto the furnace.

Apart from the sizzling of the fire, the surroundings were deathly silent.

One by one, fresh grains of bone rice came out of the furnace.

Then, Zhou Qi’an unloaded the bodies of the players. As the corpses burned into ashes, just as the figure in the sterilization suit was about to pour them into the machine to process them into bone rice, Zhou Qi’an suddenly spoke.

“Wait.”

“The shop I work at was wrecked. My boss is definitely going to fire me tomorrow.” He looked extremely embarrassed, as if he had hesitated for a long time before mustering the courage to say this. “Can you let me take some bone rice on credit?”

Even through the mask, the sterilization suit’s expression felt icy cold.

He glanced at the freshly burned ashes.

Zhou Qi’an quickly waved his hands. “Not these! They came with me—they’re interns. I just want to cremate them properly and take their remains out for burial.”

The grip on the iron hook loosened slightly, then tightened again.

Zhou Qi’an smoothly changed the subject and brought up the old photograph. “You should still have another shop assistant here. Could you pass a message to her? I’ve found an old photo.”

He described the image from memory. “It was taken at the village entrance.”

“I will keep my promise—I will kill the owner of the Jinxiang Building.”

His voice was filled with hatred. “But the shop’s rice is gone. The boss is definitely going to lose his temper. I… I’m afraid if I get kicked out, I won’t have the chance to fulfill my promise.”

The last few words were spoken very softly. His face was pale and disheveled, and his tone made it seem as if he was clinging to this shop as his only lifeline.

“The bone rice… if you could just let me take a little on credit, I will definitely…” His words were broken and scattered, as if he had nowhere else to turn.

A heavy shadow loomed over him. The figure in the sterilization suit stared into the darkness, as if communicating with some unseen presence.

The shop grew colder and colder, ice forming at the entrance. The bone-chilling frost felt as though it could strip away all pretense, exposing every hidden thought.

Just as Zhou Qi’an was about to be frozen solid by the overwhelming yin energy, the sterilization suit disappeared into the darkness of the back room.

When he reemerged, he seemed like a completely different person.

His frame was thinner.

An overpowering stench of decay rushed forward.

Zhou Qi’an’s vision blurred, and he suddenly felt a heavy weight in his hands—his arm nearly dislocated from the strain.

Aside from the stench, the cold was so deep it seeped into his bones. When he snapped back to his senses, the figure had disappeared. The sterilization suit was nowhere to be seen.

The heavy sack of rice in his hands was the only proof that everything just now hadn’t been an illusion.

【You have gained the female ghost’s initial trust.】

【Before noon, you must destroy the Jinxiang Building owner’s protective talisman. Otherwise, the female ghost will see it as betrayal.】

【Friendly reminder: Do not attempt to deceive an existence that can decide your life and death.】

Forcing his nearly frozen legs to move, Zhou Qi’an carried the rice out of the shop.

He barely managed a few steps before stopping to take a deep breath, only fully relaxing once he was far away from that eerie place.

The shop had likely stored a significant amount of bone rice over the years. The real problem had been convincing the sterilization suit to give it to him. He had already rehearsed his words countless times in his mind before even stepping into the elevator.

Perhaps because of the heavy yin energy, this sack of bone rice was far heavier than usual. Zhou Qi’an struggled to carry it, nearly losing his grip several times.

The college student waiting outside looked down at the hefty bag of bone rice, his tone uncertain. “This ghost seems… pretty easy to talk to?”

It even agreed to give credit.

Zhou Qi’an glanced at him but didn’t respond.

Nearby, Mu Tianbai let out a low chuckle, its meaning unclear.

Zhou Qi’an leaned against the wall to rest for a moment, his eyes half-closed. “The people here die, their ashes get spread on the floor, and they’re made into rice… Why do you think the ghosts would go to such lengths to desecrate the dead?”

The college student initially wanted to say it was out of hatred but then hesitated. There was no real reason—torturing corpses didn’t bring any actual benefit.

A normal ghost would just kill people outright.

He suddenly had a moment of realization, as if a splash of cold water had awakened him. “An eye for an eye? Maybe her corpse was also desecrated after death.”

So the female ghost’s mindset was deeply conflicted—on one hand, she believed corpses should be respected, yet on the other, she was driven by hatred to destroy all of them?

Zhou Qi’an did not respond and simply continued walking.

The college student was about to speak again, but Mu Tianbai crushed his restless shadow underfoot, cutting off his foolish question. “Can’t you see it yet? It’s all a layered trap.”

After entering the shop, Zhou Qi’an first used the monster corpses to let the sterilization suit vent its frustration. Then, he brought out the innocent migrant workers’ (players’) corpses in an attempt to stir even a sliver of sympathy in the vengeful ghost.

But that alone wouldn’t have been enough to sway her.

Ghosts were pragmatic beings.

What truly stopped the female ghost from killing him was his demonstration of ability—he had strategically brought up the old photograph, proving that he had already made progress in a short amount of time.

By now, Zhou Qi’an had already walked a good distance away.

The college student whispered, “You’re not entirely right.”

“It’s not just a trap.”

Mu Tianbai shot him a cold glance.

The college student gazed at Zhou Qi’an’s slender yet upright figure and spoke softly. “He’s still carrying those players’ urns, isn’t he?”

The urns served no practical purpose now—he could have discarded them at any time. Carrying a sack of bone rice filled with heavy yin energy was already exhausting, and lugging the urns as well was an unnecessary burden. The fact that he still kept them meant only one thing—he intended to give the deceased players a proper burial.

Mu Tianbai was momentarily taken aback.

“Corpses should be respected.”

The seriousness in Zhou Qi’an’s voice when he had said those words resurfaced in his mind.

The college student’s gaze wavered, clearly lost in thought. But all that occupied his mind were memories of being fed to the fish.

As he reached a sorrowful part of his recollection, he wiped the corner of his eye with his sleeve, silently hoping that Brother Zhou wouldn’t only respect the dead—he could show a little respect to the living sometimes, too.